Dracula

So the quality survived.

And I made my very first short film called The Fall of Count Dracula at the age of 12, of which I actually also played Dracula, and I had a friend shoot the scenes that I was in.

It's about eight or ten minutes long.

I recently, about five or ten years ago, I don't even remember, put music to it, got it digitized, and it sits on my website.

So michael-pressman.com.

When you look at short films, you'll click it, and you can witness the fall of Count Dracula.

Were you a fan of horror when you were a kid and that's what kind of drove you into making Dracula?

No, now we're going to go to deep psychological.

So I think Hammer Horror to me is like the studio of Gothic Horror in my opinion.

When I first discovered Hammer, it was mostly through, it was definitely through Dracula.

I discovered Hammer through Dracula and partially because I was such a big Star Wars fan.

and I knew everything about Star Wars I could tell you everybody in the old Star Wars shows when I was a kid and I collected like everything Star Wars so Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin reading about like in like Star Wars Insider magazines and everything they would talk about actors and there'd be like stuff about the actors and the crew and everything and at some point I learned that Peter Cushing was in a Dracula movie And I already liked a lot of horror movies by this point in my life because I've been a lifelong horror fan.

So I learned about him starring alongside Christopher Lee in Dracula.

So that was definitely the first Hammer movie I saw.

And at that moment, I realized I liked that Dracula way better than the Bela Lugosi of Dracula that I had been watching for so long.

And a lot of people will probably disagree with me on that.

Blackula.

Dracula's soul brother.

Deadlier even than he.

You know,

So it really has true horror in it, and it's definitely cult.

I mean, I saw it for the first time in the midnight showing era in the early 1980s because it didn't do well when it was first released.

And by the way, it was shot in the same building, the same house as... 1958 Dracula with Chris Lee that we Christopher Lee that we saw last week by by when they shot this in the 70s, the roof had caved in and.

You've seen all kinds of movies, but you've never seen any.

I'm a fisherman.

So Terrence Fisher's bride and brides of Dracula's Dracula's nowhere near the movie.

But I love the color tone of that.

We didn't quite go that lavish, but I wanted to.

Usually Halloween night after the trick-or-treaters have gone, and I've already bought the Halloween candy, so that's part of the preparation.

after the trick-or-treaters are gone, it's Dracula.

That's my evening with Bela Lugosi.

So that's what I do on Halloween night, which we used on Graveyard Cinema once.

I got it for Graveyard.

I have a six-foot stand-up of Lugosi as Dracula.

So that sits in my dining room.

I had it up once just inside the front door when the trick-or-treaters were coming, but it actually scared a little girl once.

Associate producer Garrett Fantim has the scoop.

Hammer Films is releasing a newly restored 4K version of its 1958 film Dracula, starring Christopher Lee in the titular role.

And it comes with more than three minutes of footage long thought to be lost.

The scenes survived in the film's original Japanese theatrical version, which escaped the cuts imposed by British and American censors.

But the footage remained missing for decades until Warner Brothers discovered pristine reels in its archives.

The restored version brings back the graphic violence, including extended scenes of Dracula attacking his victims and meeting his bitter end in the sunlight.

Hammer's new owner, theater impresario John Gore, is also investing in the studio's future, restoring its back catalog and producing new horror films.

Its upcoming original, Ithaca, starring Luke Hemsworth and drawing on indigenous Canadian mythology, is currently screening at film festivals.